|
721068a
|
I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.
|
|
numbness
emptiness
stillness
normalcy
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
a40ae84
|
I guess I should have reacted the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.
|
|
numbness
stillness
normalcy
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
f1a289e
|
The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.
|
|
madness
normalcy
|
Robert Anton Wilson |
|
dc48ec5
|
I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.
|
|
pretend
normalcy
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
d94cd68
|
It might seem odd that in cities teetering at the edge of the abyss young people still go to class--in this case an evening class on corporate identity and product branding--but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does.
|
|
life
ordinary-life
normalcy
dying
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
00fed3b
|
If you can't, or won't, think of Seymour, then you go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoanalyst. You just do that. You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and the H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the Times, and God knows what else that's gloriously normal.
|
|
normalcy
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
13d66f5
|
You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.
|
|
normalcy
|
John Steinbeck |
|
5901209
|
Her tragedy, if she had one, was to be as normal and average as any child ever born.
|
|
normalcy
you-re-not-special
sad
|
Holly Black |
|
0942b3b
|
"I'm sorry I was short with him--but I don't like a man to approach me telling me it for my sake. "Maybe it was," said Wylie "It's poor technique." "I'd all for it," said Wylie. "I'm vain as a woman. If anybody pretends to be interested in me, I'll ask for more. I like advice." Stahr shook his head distastefully. Wylie kept on ribbing him--he was one of those to whom this privilege was permitted. "You fall for some kinds of flattery," he said. "this 'little Napoleon stuff.'" "It makes me sick," said Stahr, "but it's not as bad as some man trying to help you." "If you don't like advice, why do you pay me?" "That's a question of merchandise," said Stahr. "I'm a merchant. I want to buy what's in your mind." "You're no merchant," said Wylie. "I knew a lot of them when I was a publicity man, and I agree with Charles Francis Adams." "What did he say?" "He knew them all--Gould, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Astor--and he said there wasn't one he'd care to meet again in the hereafter. Well--they haven't improved since then, and that's why I say you're no merchant." "Adams was probably a sourbelly," said Stahr. "He wanted to be head man himself, but he didn't have the judgement or else the character." "He had brains," said Wylie rather tartly. "It takes more than brains. You writers and artists poop out and get all mixed up, and somebody has to come in and straighten you out." He shrugged his shoulders. "You seem to take things so personally, hating people and worshipping them--always thinking people are so important-especially yourselves. You just ask to be kicked around. I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it--on the inside."
|
|
the-last-tycoon
incredulity
personal
restraint
normalcy
|
F. Scott Fitzgerald |
|
3157977
|
The ordinary lunatic is generally a harmless, isolated case; since everyone sees that something is wrong with him, he is quickly taken care of. But the unconscious infections of groups of so-called normal people are more subtle and far more dangerous.
|
|
lunacy
normalcy
|
C.G. Jung |
|
f7f1620
|
"It's horrible," she said. He looked at her in surprise. Horrible? Wasn't that odd? He hadn't thought that for years. For him the word "horror" had become obsolete. A surfeiting of terror made terror a cliche. To Robert Neville the situation merely existed as natural fact. It had no adjectives."
|
|
normalcy
terror
legend
|
Richard Matheson |
|
901b624
|
There were a couple of occasions in India when I was twenty that felt to me like going out with a thimble in your hand, hoping to catch a drop of rain, and having the ocean land on your head. These experiences convinced me that there is an absolute love that pervades everything.
|
|
spirituality
normalcy
|
David James Duncan |